Hiroshima A-Bomb Dome! (guided tour, and scavenger hunt!)

Description

The A-Bomb Dome is the only preserved building from the atomic bomb detonation of August 6, 1945 during WWII. Being an American, I'm tied to this place by my country's history. I was very interested to get viewpoints from the other side; to find out what the Dome meant to Japanese people. So, I walked up and introduced myself in Japanese to meet them in their language first... then asked! For the rest of the story, go to my blog here http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/swami_worldtrav/4/1255705407/tpod.html .

*** I HIGHLY RECOMMEND you start with the 'Highlights.' I've sequenced them for your maximum enjoyment:) START WITH THE ONE TITLED, "WELCOME!" ***

* IMPORTANT: READ THIS...

QUICK HELP: Photosynth Navigation- Navigation is fairly easy, but you have to push the right buttons:) Hopefully, this Quick Help will get you going and ensure you have a wonderful experience, *** because this thing can be VERY cool!:) ***- There are actually TWO navigation interfaces. The default one requires you install Silverlight. Most any computer can run it and it has some nice features. The other, which I HIGHLY recommend for "point clouds," is the "Direct3D Viewer." Click on the green text, "View Synth in Direct3D Viewer" to the lower-left of the viewing area.- In both interfaces you will see icons for pan, zoom, full-screen, etc. Click them all!:)- Silverlight has a cool "Overhead" feature. Try it!- Use the SpaceBar to take a sort of guided tour. Successively tap it.- Use the > and < keys to move fwd/bwd in the order the photos were taken.- Use the + and - keys to zoom in/out.- You can also use the cursor arrows, or click-n-drag the mouse.- The GO BACK icon is very useful!* One very cool thing is the "point cloud." This is a 3D approximation of scene objects (like the Dome!). At any time, HOLD the control key down. Now here's the way cool part: if in the center of the screen a "donut" or arrows appear, you can click it and drag the mouse to orbit around the object. You can even see it from angles not taken by the photographer! Be sure to continue holding the mouse. the Direct3D Viewer is MUCH better at this. Use P to toggle the point cloud.- The Sliverlight interface provides a "Highlights" bar to the right for quick navigation to points of interest.- Of course, you can always just hit the play icon and sit back and enjoy. Whatever suits your fancy:) Definitely put it in full-screen, though.

All right, it's actually quite easy once you get the hang of it, and it's LOTS OF FUN! So, have a play!:)...

P.S. Navigation can be a little confusing at times, but don't sweat it. You can always reorient yourself using the Highlights, the Overhead, or even the Image Grid View (use the tilde ~ key).

Tnx Greg. And kudos back at you on iSynth. That must have been a major project! Also, congrats on your recent graduation from BU and employment w/ the PS team.

I wasn't big on the switch from the Direct3D viewer to the Silverlight one, but must say that the Highlights feature is EXCELLENT. It does indeed make the user experience MUCH smoother and more enjoyable.

Now, for the powers that be, here are a few constructive comments and suggestions...

- A hotkey to to cycle forward/backward/home/end thru the Highlights would be very useful. Maybe it already exists.- A longer text field.- Hyper-links +/or support for HTML in text field.- Play Highlights as a slideshow (w/ configurable time delay).- BUG: Up/down arrow fails. Sometimes, must click opposite arrow to get other to function.- BUG: Move down sometimes fails to show proper reordering at end.- Drag-n-drop reordering would be nice.- BUG: Highlights editor crashes browser (Firefox) sometimes. Not sure exact conditions, sorry. Probably a known "defect."

Oh yeah, I reference the same foto twice! Bet the programmers didn't see that one coming! Here's why: I used the "THANK YOU FOR VISITING..." foto as book ends. The text is different for each one though. I have set the foto as the opening foto, but the CLOSING highlight is activated on opening!:( Furthermore, only the down navigation arrow is active. A not so savvy user might have a hard time actually finding where to start:( Ideally, it should correctly, and automatically enable the correct FIRST occurrence of the highlight. This is no small problem as it could easily frustrate the user, which of course should be avoided.

we actually didn't add anything to prevent someone from adding the same photo as a highlight more than once. Eventually (we have a ton of features to build) we'll upgrade highlights to be a specific spot on a photo - not just the entire photo.

Swami, I just found a little quirk in the current viewer that lets you escape being locked looking straight down in Overhead View. This means that you retain viewing the camera frusta (or at least one frustum at a time) when hovering over features in the pointcloud + its image's thumbnail, but you can see it all from ground level. I don't know how long it will last + it is only good until you click something but you can use the WASDEC{L:" controls to move your position around while retaining the frustum in 3D. Kind of cool.

Aye, I agree. I like the thumbnail strip along the bottom of the viewer as it's a throwback to the CTP Photosynth viewer from 2006/2007/2008 but you actually missed a month or so there where before the thumbnails showed up in the geo-align control where there was a miniature Photosynth viewer embedded in the right hand side panel which functioned completely as normal, while the frustum of your current position showed in overhead view in the main window, as it does now.

This meant that you could play the slideshow, use [,] and [.] to navigate in filename order, etc. In short, there was just more control over what order you moved through the synth as well as the benefit of just setting the slideshow up and being able to sit back and observe the camera move through the scene.